What are some books that think outside the linear first- or third-person storyline? Some examples I can think of include:

  • Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi The book starts out with two sisters separated in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. One stays in Africa, the other is taken to America. The rest of the book bounces back and forth between across the ocean, each covering a direct descendant of these two women for about 300 years. The author had to create a character, world, and story for each individual chapter of the book, basically making the reader connect with this newly-introduced person in the span of just a few pages.

  • Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold The narrator is telling her story after having been murdered.

  • Inland by Téa Obreht One half of the book told the story of a woman struggling in the American southwest in the 1800s. It took me a good while to figure out who was narrating the other half of the book: >!A dead body riding around on camelback.!<

  • Always Never by Jordi Lefabre This one’s a graphic novel told backwards. Chapter 1 is actually the end of the story, and each chapter works its way back in time until you arrive at the last chapter, which is the beginning of the story.

EDIT: Adding Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday. Two different narrators break the book up into three parts: Alice’s story part 1, Amar’s story, then Alice’s story part 2. I had to read the reviews after finishing this story to figure out what the author has done, but it was brilliant.

  • AlienMagician7@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    i am red by orhan pamuk. the author not only uses the voices of our main characters but of different things and objects (ie a dog, a picture, death, the country, a colour among other things) to create a cohesive picture. i remember being entranced the first time i read it.

    same goes for midnight’s children by salman rushdie. he leaps back and forth, foreshadowing and having all things happen at once sometime so it seems like one is conscious of several layers of time existing. it’s surreal and dreamlike.

    celestial bodies by jokha alharti follows the same format, but it’s slightly more confusing in the sense that some parts seem surreal and others not so. but honestly i found it to be refreshing and unusual as well in that sense.

    life after life by kate atkinson gave us an interesting concept of looping back and forth to live one’s life with the vague sense that one can help to avert things but yet shows us that nothing is ever set in stone.